History

Kanto

As an Ekans

Jessie received Ekans for chūgen (as a birthday present in the dub) before she met Ash. It is unknown who it was a gift from.

Arbok first appeared in Pokémon Emergency! as an Ekans. Throwing their Poké Balls down from their Meowth balloon, Jessie and James used both it and James's Koffing to quickly overtake the defenseless ViridianPokémon Center. Koffing's job was to create a Smokescreen while Ekans destroyed the computers. Chasing everyone into the back room, Ekans scared away the Pokémon that were sent out by Ash, which causes Misty to decide to battle Team Rocket. This is a failed effort, however, as both of them manage to catch up to Ash in no time at all. Just then, Nurse Joy's Pikachu come out and healed Ash's Pikachu with a Thunder Shock attack, while at the same time attacking the Team Rocket trio. Giving Ash's Pikachu enough power to stand up, Ash charged-up Pikachu using Misty's charred bike, and he let him have his own Thunder Shock. As the group are being electrocuted, Koffing releases a stream of Smog from one of the craters on its body, and the electricity climbs up the toxic gas, causing the entire Pokémon Center to explode, and sending Team Rocket blasting off.

Jessie and her Arbok

It was used constantly by Jessie and eventually evolved into an Arbok in the episode Dig Those Diglett! along with James's Koffing after Jessie and James desperately wanted their Pokémon to evolve.

Although Arbok lost nearly every battle, as is traditional for Pokémon owned by Team Rocket, it has occasionally been shown to have extraordinary power and endurance to match its massive size. For example, in The Misty Mermaid, Arbok was able to single handedly battle Horsea, Starmie, Squirtle and Seaking underwater (where water Pokémon have the advantage) without the help of Weezing, enduring a huge amount of offense and eventually cornering all its opponents for the victory before Seel evolved into Dewgong and defeated it with Ice Beam.

Johto

In The Whistle Stop, when Team Rocket stole a whistle from Arielle, Meowth blew it in the right note to cause Arbok to dance around and cry out in reaction. This gave Meowth a chance to command it to help capture a group of Ledyba from Arielle by having it dig underground and jump out in front of them for Meowth to throw a net on them and tie them in ropes. When they tried to escape, Arbok uses its tail to grab the ropes, but the Ladyba eventually escape and drag Arbok into Jessie's Lickitung and James' Victreebel, who were attacking Ash, Misty, Brock, and Arielle.

In A Poached Ego!, Team Rocket found a poacher holding a herd of Ekans and Koffing captive in Hoenn. After freeing them, James and Jessie reluctantly ordered Weezing and Arbok to stay in the wild and guard their fellow Pokémon. Arbok and Weezing had to when the poacher used his Tyranitar to attack Jessie, James, and Meowth, even though it was clear that they wanted to stay and defend them. The two Pokémon have not been seen since then.

Personality and characteristics

Arbok and Weezing seem to be both very emotional and were very loyal to their trainers. This was first shown in Island of the Giant Pokémon, where they got very sad for being separated from Jessie and James, crying desperately, with Pikachu trying to cheer them up. At the end of the episode, when every lost Pokémon got reunited with their partners, Ekans and Jessie, along with Koffing and James, were happily crying. It was also in this episode that it explained to Meowth along with James's Koffing "Pokémon do bad things because master bad. Pokémon not bad." This shows that while both it and Weezing deeply care for their trainers and always feel sad when seperated, they never view themselves as bad guys; they only carry out evil deeds out of orders from their trainers. The only time Arbok and Weezing refused to obey their trainers was in A Chansey Operation, where they refused to attack a Chansey because of how it cared for them during their operations from injuries that were caused from Team Rocket's scheme of stealing a group of Pokémon from a Pokémon Center going wrong. This also shows that Arbok and Weezing will show a great deal of gratitude to anyone who helps them from any form of circumstance that harms them in anyway. In Lights, Camera, Quacktion both Arbok and Weezing got depressed for being rejected as the main characters in the movie. It was only with Jessie's and James's help that they got over it. On their last appearance, in A Poached Ego!, they were reluctant in leaving Jessie and James, and when they did, they strongly cried.

Moves used

A † shows that the move was used recently, unless all moves fit this case or there are fewer than five known moves.

Trivia

Jessilina and her Arbok-shaped flute

Arbok's arrow-like pattern on its neck differs in some episodes. Sometimes, the ends of the arrow stretch until the ends of its eye-like patterns on its chest and is only a few inches wide. Similarly, there are two red dots on its arrow in some episodes and in other episodes there are none.

In The Misty Mermaid, Jessie's Arbok was shown to be able to swim without the need for air.

Its gender was hinted in the Japanese version of Island of the Giant Pokémon. In the subtitles, it refers to itself and Koffing as おれたち ore-tachi, which is a pronoun normally used by males meaning "we", also used by characters such as Ash, Brock and James in the Japanese version.

Out of all Pokémon ever owned by Jessie or James, Arbok has used the most moves, with eleven.